Here's some citations for you: https://pseudoerasmus.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/irish-famine.jpg?w=640&h=267 https://pseudoerasmus.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/

Here's some citations for you: https://pseudoerasmus.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/irish-famine.jpg?w=640&h=267 https://pseudoerasmus.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/irish-fami... https://pseudoerasmus.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/ograda-figure-3-1.jpg?w=640 https://pseudoerasmus.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/ograda-fig... As you can see, domestic Irish production of all foods, in calories, just about halved. Food production absolutely cratered, due to weather and blight. They eminently were not able to farm "all the rye and corn they needed", and such imports were also in shorter supply than usual, because famine/scarcity conditions were occurring all across Europe (helping to spark the 1848 Revolutions, notably.) But these imports still had to be paid for somehow, and in an era of largely subsistence farming and thus small savings, this had to be paid for in large part by exports - of what? Of highest-value agricultural goods. You see from the graph that Ireland, during the depths of the famine, was a net importer of every grain except oats, where their exports had also fallen from normal levels. And, you see from the chart that, in total calories, Ireland had gone from being a net exporter to a net importer - bringing in over one-quarter of their total food supply in the Famine years, and going from typically exporting around 240,000 tons of grain a year, to importing up to 750,000 tons. Stopping exports from Ireland would have meant more dairy, oats, meat in Ireland, true - and less of the cheap imported grains that people really needed. It's true that the landowners were part of the overall problem, but no export limits would have caused new food supply to spring into existence or be imported.